“Make new friends, but keep the old….

…one is silver and the other gold.”  I remember singing that verse in Brownies (you are a Brownie before you are a Girl Scout.  Unfortunately, I did not have the “sharing” spirit, so I never made it to Girl Scouts 🙂  )wondering what in the world it meant.  Unfortunately, it has taken my 23 years to figure it out.

Now that I am an adult, I have found it hard to make and maintain friendships.  Kids are a whole lot more accepting than adults are.  I have always wondered why it was so hard for me?  Do people not like me?  Do I smell funny?  Do I make dumb jokes?  Am I boring to talk to?  These questions have plagued me for years.  Badly enough, it is due to something I have recently figured out.

“Make new friends, but keep the old.”  This is good advice!  I guess through the eyes of a naive teenager, I always thought my friends would be around and that nothing would change if I ever left. Boy, was I wrong!  When I went to college out of state, I did not keep in touch with my friends at home. When I graduated from college, I returned home to find my friends had established separate lives for themselves and moved on.  Since I did not remain in touch with them throughout my college years, I found myself irreversibly ousted from their daily lives and thoughts.  Basically, I had not been a good friend. Looking back, it was quite egotistical (or naive) of me to think that everyone puts their lives on hold waiting for the day I return and pick up our friendship where we left it off.  I found out that it just doesn’t work that way. 

I made quite a few friends in college and I thought these friendships would last a lifetime as well.  These were my silver friends.  When I started college and became immersed in the educational daily grind, I traded my antiquated gold friends for my “new” silver friends.  But, it wasn’t long after I arrived home from college and started a career that my new silver friends also returned to their respective homes, found a job, and continued on with their lives as well…trading me in for their familiar gold friends back home.  They were wiser than I.

So, now I find myself without my silver or gold friends.  What went wrong here?  Recently, I found myself hit with a huge wave of nostalgia, pining for my old friends, my home where I grew up, and anything old and familiar.  Why does life have to be so complicated?  Don’t get me wrong, anyone from Alexandria who is reading this blog, I do like living here and I love my church.  I just miss the good ole days of having those heart to heart conversations with your best friend.  Being able to walk over to your friend’s house, at any given time, and spill your guts on what happened that day.  I miss my friends.  I guess I do have a few friends here.  They are more or less the conversational kind.  Most of the people here have their “gold” friends established already.  They all grew up together and don’t have much more room for “silver” friends.

The good thing, though, is that these wonderful things called MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and blogging were invented and after creating accounts, I have reconnected with quite a few of my “gold” friends.  Now that I am a little older and wiser, I am hoping to be a better friend.  To all of my new silver friends, I hope you will stick around long enough to where one day we can say our friendship is “gold”.  I always have enough room for more friends.  To all of my old “gold” friends, even though this apology is over ten years past due, I am sorry.  I love you all lots!  I miss the good ole days and hope to reconnect with you all and most importantly, I promise not to do it again! Cross my heart!

Andrea

TV Converter Box Coupons

Viv and I were going through the two huge piles of mail and other junk sitting on the counter today and we came across our expired coupons, from the governement, to purchase two tv converter boxes.  I remember seeing a post from Drew Ward on the same subject.  I was curious to see if the government decided to let us reapply for new coupons, since I read so much flack from different news services, and sure enough, they are letting persons, who have not redeemed their coupons , reapply.  I reapplied for my two and it told me that they would be mailed out by June 1st.  So, everyone who missed the boat, reapply!   www.dtv2009.gov

Andrea

Bungalow Work on Memorial Day

Since we have not done a whole lot with the new bungalow rent house we purchased, we decided to go over there today to clean up, paint and plan the next stage for this house.  I painted the dining room and then, somewhere in there, I got bored and took my new SLR camera around to see what kind of pictures I could get out of it.  I have bought two books on digital SLR photography…by the way…so, I wanted to try out some of the tips in the book.  Even though they are not phenomenal, you have to admit that these photos are MUCH better than what my old dying digi cam was taking last month.  The last picture cracks me up.  It looks like Vivian needs to go on a FEED THE CHILDREN campaign poster!  LOL.  I found her in the living room eating a piece of leftover Popeyes chicken.  She looked so funny in her do-rag (I wear one when I paint and you know the old saying, monkey see, monkey do, monkey has to have one too!)  Although, I do believe she looks a LOT better than I do in a do-rag.

Bye bye orange peel!!  Hello Timothy Straw by Benjamin Moore!

This house has a beautiful yard.  Since it borders our yard, we are toying with the idea of moving our property lines and having it resurveyed, etc.  I cut several blooms from this very old hydrangea bush.  I am also toying with the idea of digging the thing up and planting it somewhere in our back yard.  I found this pink looking bloom.  I am not sure what it is.  I can’t tell if it is a weed or if it is some sort of old flower.  Anyone know?

Andrea

Vivian’s First Dance Recital

Vivian’s first dance recital was tonight!  Her recital song was: ‘We’re Rockin’ The World’ and boy, did she ROCK!  Good job baby!  As she aptly puts it, she smiled the WHOLE time!

Andrea

Paw Paw’s Brag Book

Here is a cute and easy Father or Grandfather’s day brag book.  For complete directions on how to make it, see my previous post here.  Here is Paw Paw’s book.  We already posted Poppy’s book.   Vivian has one more to make…for daddy!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

New Camera – Sony SLR A200

My new camera arrived today from Amazon!  Woo hoo!  I took it straight out of the box and took a few snapshots around my house.  Here are some photos.  I did not have to use the red eye reduction on the shots with Vivian in them.  That is amazing!  I also took some in natural light, low light and used the flash.  I am very excited!  All of the lenses for my Minolta fit the camera and Steven bought me several fancy filters…[doing cartwheels]…

Happy Thursday everyone!

Overcast outside...on the front porch

Twitter Ain’t So Bad

For the past few months, I have been monitoring the use of Twitter and how it can work fora blog.  I have come to the conclusion that it “ain’t so bad” after all.  I definitely do not want to sign up my cell phone for Twitter updates.  I would never get anything done and I believe my employer would fire me!  Twitter on a cell phone, to me, is probably the biggest cause of short attention span and ADD.  Not to mention, I really don’t want a bunch of disconnected sentences from random people.  I do see where it can be useful for a blog.  In the instances where you do not want to waste an entire post on a very brief thought or subject, you can just “twitter” it.  On the other hand, I am intimidated by Twitter.  I do not want my time wasted and I do not want to burn brain cells on trying to figure out what the person meant.  So, I try to make my Twitters short and smart.  That’s not easy to do in 140 characters.  I added it to my blog yesterday, so I am testing it out and we shall see what happens!

Andrea

What is worse than carpet in a bathroom?

The carpet under the carpet, of course!

 

Working on our new bungalow rent house, Steven pulled up the carpet in the bathroom to work on the plumbing and also to see what was underneath in case the floor was rotting or needed work.  We plan on putting down ceramic tile in here.  Much to his surprise, he found some circa 1960 beautiful green carpet.

Andrea

Thumbs up to HACL

Earlier this year, the Armour Building, on Lower Third, was donated to the Historical Association of Central Louisiana.  Along with the donation of the building, came a grant from the Coughlin-Saunders foundation to build a temporary roof for the purpose of stopping  rainwater from deteriorating the building further.  The Armour Building was built in the early 1900s as a meat packing plant.  According to Jonathan and Donna Fricker, previous directors of the Louisiana Division of Historic Preservation located in Baton Rouge, there are railroad spurs that lead right up to the building and this building was an integral part of Alexandria’s economy early in the 20th century.  In their past role as directors of LDHP, Jonathan and Donna Fricker are most known for writing several National Register nominations for Louisiana properties most of which were subsequently accepted and listed on the National Register.  The Frickers were retained by HACL to write a National Register nomination  for the Armour Building.   Earlier this month, at their Bi-Annual meeting, the Louisiana National Register Review Committee accepted the nomination and sent to Washington for final disposition.  For more information regarding National Register status and criteria for historic properties, please click here.

The Armour building is currently for sale.  Anyone wishing to tour the property or has an interest in returning this building to commerce, please contact the Historical Association at: 318-448-3952.

Thumbs up to HACL for stepping up to the plate.

Andrea

My dead camera

Well, it is official.  My Fujifilm finepix digital camera that I received for my birthday about 4 years ago, has finally bit the dust.  The poor thing cannot focus anymore or take more than a couple pictures without killing the battery.  I even bought a replacement battery for it a couple months ago, but it did not really help any.

So, I guess since I am having to replace it, I might as well upgrade to an SLR.  I am looking at some of the Sony SLR cameras.  I have a nice Minolta 35mm camera with a couple lenses that I can use on any of the Sony SLRs.  The Sony SLR cameras are the only SLRs that you can interchange with other cameras’ lenses.  Steven, my husband says the Sony SLR AD200 is decent for the price. 

I think that this one might be the winner.  I also looked at some of the higher end point and shoot cameras.  However, Steven is of the opinion that if we are going to buy a new camera, we might as well spend the money and buy something that will last for a good few years.  I am of the opinion that technology changes to rapidly, that it will be outdated in a couple years….so…why not play it safe now.

Does anyone own an SLR and do you like it?

Andrea